MSN Search over-delivers

Y'know... I didn't expect much. Call me a cynic, but I kind of expected a half-hearted "yeah we're in the desktop seach game still" attempt from Microsoft. But the great thing about MSN Search is that it over-delivers. It blows me away what a great job they have done with this. I'll admit I'm not keen on the IE interface, but the little pop up result that appears on top of the taskbar is perfect for my tastes. It's fast and accurate in all my tests so far. I'm un-installing Google Search and ESP. For now, anyway, MSN Search is my best friend.

Comments

[MattyT]

Heya Cam,

Can't say I'm a fan. I mean it's not a bad effort for a beta but for a Firefox user that has Copernic installed it's a backward step...

Agreed that GDS was a little disappointing (though undeniably uber-cool that it hooks into web search) but I don't see how MSN Toolbar desktop search is superior to Copernic in _any_way_. And Copernic is better in at least the following:

o Much better UI
o Aware of _many_ more file types
o Has a quick preview panel
o Is well out of beta testing

Further, it now works well with Firefox, indexing bookmarks and history! Can't see MS providing that feature in a hurry...

Anyways, if you haven't already tried Copernic give it a go - I've installed a whole bunch of desktop search apps (with the notable exception of X1, I refuse to pay with such strong competition!) and this is my pick of the bunch.

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/

Cheers,
Matt

[Cameron]

Thanks Matt, I'll give it a try. I've given up on Firefox though, I'm sticking with Maxthon for now.

[MattyT]

At the risk of sounding like one of the loony, over-the-top, a-little-too-zealous Mozilla fans, why did you give up on Firefox?

I mean Maxthon is a pretty decent effort but it's still built on IE. As the saying goes, no matter how you dress up a turd...

[Cameron Reilly]

Matt, I think Firefox is great, but it just doesn't offer me any immediate reasons for moving off of Maxthon. I've got Maxthon tweaked how I like it. The main reason to stay with Maxthon initially was that OWA sux in FF, but as my network admin recently turned RPC over HTTP on, that's no longer an issue, I can use my Outlook client while I'm OOF. So I might end up giving FF another go but I don't feel any hurry. Maybe if someone comes out with a plug in that I really really need...

[MattyT]

Heya Cam,

Started commenting again but started waffling too much so it became a blog entry in it's own right...please take a look at my reply at:

http://sublimesoftware.blogspot.com/2004/12/why-i-like-firefox.html

Cheers maaaate,
Matt